MISSOURI WATCH: THE GREAT AMERICAN SPIN CYCLE

Just as many had reached the conclusion that the growing incidence of school violence was a part of the alleged culture of violence south of the Mason-Dixon line, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student in Pennsylvania was charged with the fatal shooting of a teacher and the wounding of two students and another teacher.

Was this latest incident the result of southern culture or some other component the truth seekers began promulgating immediately after the tragedy in Edinboro? Even to those who don't let logic deter their pat, one sided explanations, this latest incident would suggest that whatever evil lurks in the South wasn't exported to a far-distant location in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Neither the absence of logic nor insight has allayed the growing practice in today's America to find an immediate, and seemingly plausible explanation for what seems to be a growing list of U.S. domestic tragedies. Whether startling incidents occur near Jonesboro, Ark., in West Paducah, Ky., or a low-income housing development in urban centers such as St. Louis and Kansas City, we are given a spin cycle that would do justice to the political professionals in Washington.

Generically, the causes for these tragedies remain unchanged: guns, the prevailing culture of violence, the media, bad parenting, breakdown of the family, liberal policies, economic stress and even the philosophical preachings of the political parties, the latter having enough problems without being saddled with still more.

Usually there is just enough validity and logic in the assortment of reasons presented that most citizens can reach the conclusion that best suits their own beliefs -- and prejudices -- and go right on with our lives as if nothing had happened. But whether we realize it or not, there is something sadly diminishing, and ultimately misleading, in the ritualized rush to instant judgment -- or the rush to instant spin and advocacy.

Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves, amid the flood of questions that national tragedies leave in their wake, whether the babble of interpreters provides insight or just sows more confusion and cynicism. The truth be told, not only in the media but in the so-called helping services (psychiatrists, social workers, counselors), we now have a mob of meaning makers and interpreters of why things happen, and the question left unanswered is whether all of these provide more clarity or whether something serious is lost amid all the verbiage.

It is only natural, I believe, to seek coherence and meaning in the aftermath of unfathomable events. The more profoundly resonant the event, the more we need to fit it somehow into an emotional or moral context, even if events at Jonesboro or Edinboro do not immediately produce equally profound responses. The answers provided after both tragedies failed to meet the desired criteria: gun-control groups saw the shootings as evidence of the need for far reaching confiscation, while such persons as Oliver North delivered political diatribes against federal control of American family life. Both were reminders of what passes for analysis is really little more than special-interest advocacy.

These tragedies are hard enough to bear, given the distasteful use of heart-string yanking by the electronic media who rush in to exploit the situation with their How-did-you-feel? questions, without debasing the situation still further with political pap that is designed to win followers, not elicit solutions.

The reasons behind most of today's shocking tragedies are far from simple, not easily answered by suggestions from casual, usually poorly informed observers. It may well be that we are perfectly capable of sifting out what is spin and what is important while seeing these recent episodes as for valid, even essential, arguments about gun parental neglect or inadequate counseling services.

This rush to judgment is unlikely to end. In a society addicted to fast food, e-mail and 24-hour news bulletins, a demand for instant analysis seems inevitable. The big question is whether that coexists with a more questioning scrutiny that realizes the pat answers are only a part of a much bigger picture involving a nation of 265 million men, women and children.

America's religious heritage should teach us that the long view of history is the most important element in understanding human shortcomings and tragedies. Christians, Jews and Muslims rely on documents 2,000 and 3,000 years old, not on today's sound bytes from on-the-scene commentators. Society as a whole should be raising and considering questions about the long-range meaning of events without trying to answer them on the spot. This would be a much superior contribution to moral and religious reflection than premature moralizing.

Questions that deal with statistical evidence on growing juvenile violence, the nature of the acts themselves and against whom they are directed, new and changing attitudes toward society as a whole and on individuals in particular, are all pertinent components of these tragedies and lend themselves as road signs toward new approaches and remedies.

We ignore these salient points at the risk of a society we surely are convinced by now we must improve and ameliorate if we are to survive.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.